when i was a teen and visiting my grandmother's new york
lake house every summer, we usually made a stop at the local renaissance faire. there were two things that always made it
memorable. the first, was that for many
years, my cousin was one of the actors.
as a result, for two or three years, before our visit to the faire,
several of her cast-mates would come to the lake house and spend the day with
us boating, water skiing, relaxing.
typically we visited the faire the following day, and to see the change
from real person to character was truly unique.
it also always made us feel like we were part of the group...to be
interacting with characters who we had met the day before giving us a sly wink
or some small acknowledgement of our shared 'real life' day.
the second was that this particular ren faire had something
i'd never seen/done before or after.
they had a quest. so, instead of
wandering aimlessly throughout the day, we started with a clue which led us to
a character, who gave us another clue, which led us to a character, etcetera,
etcetera. usually it would take a good chunk of the day (with the leftover time
available for watching other entertainment), and of course, my family won every
time we participated (beating out other attendees also participating). it created a totally different kind of
interaction with the characters than you would otherwise get and it was super
fun to collect clues.
larysa and i spent the day walking. really. mostly walking. we signed up for the
'quest' and found the morning half extremely enjoyable. the clues were not difficult to follow and we
met and interacted with some fantastic characters. it felt 'easier' than i remembered my previous
experience, but nonetheless, we enjoyed ourselves. of course, we were the first people to turn
in our collected map pieces and with the second portion not beginning until
over an hour later, we took a break to sit and eat.
of course i had to have a giant turkey leg, sadly, it wasn't
as good as i remember them. but the
sitting was lovely and much needed. the
faire grounds aren't big, but our clue hunting had us doing a lot of back and
forth. fortunately it was a beautiful
day, which got more and more crowded as the day went on.
we then began the second part of the quest, and it didn't
take long for us to figure out that it was kind of lame. i don't really know how it came to be at the
new york festival, but in this case, it's a seperate company than the ren faire
folks who run it. it appears that they
have coordinated with the faire enough to involve their cast for the morning
portion, but not for the afternoon portion, so the people that we were trying to
interact with in the afternoon seemed kind of lazy. and frankly, at that point
we had clocked 7 miles and just didn't appreciate being given tasks that would
take us from one end of the grounds to the other, only to do the same over
again. we called it.
it was fun, but i'm not sure that i would do it again. it certainly wasn't as memorable as my
earlier experiences. maybe with kids or
a big group? but even then... i felt
like new york was so much better because, aside from the quest part, the faire
itself was better. the stage shows were pretty amazing, and you could see a lot
of genuinely good shakespeare comedy all throughout the day. the characters
were more involved with the patrons. i
don't know, just seems better. now i kind of really want to go back to the ny
one to see if that all still holds true.
sadly, with my grandmother's passing, i may never have another
opportunity. so instead, it will stay this perfect little memory in my head.
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